Alex Robert Seith (July 27, 1934 – March 23, 2010)[1] was the 1978 Democratic nominee for the United States Senate from Illinois.
A complete newcomer to electoral politics, he nearly pulled off one of the greatest upsets in Senate history when he narrowly lost to nationally renowned incumbent Republican Charles Percy by eight percentage points.
According to Statistics of Congressional Election of November 7, 1978, (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1978) the margin of defeat was 250,000 votes.
Percy managed to salvage his office by means of a televised mea culpa in the final week of the campaign, but Seith's campaign may have been dealt a blow some days earlier, when popular Chicago Sun-Times columnist Mike Royko informed readers that Seith had served as a character witness in the trial of a mob figure some years earlier.
Throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s he provided on air commentaries for WLS (Channel 7) television in Chicago, the ABC network affiliate.